perspective

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has revealed his talking regularly to Luis Suarez in an attempt to convince the wantaway striker to stay at Anfield. The Uruguay international is desperate to leave the club, with Arsenal his most likely destination. But Gerrard has not yet given up on talking Suarez into committing his future to Liverpool.

Corey Hertzog is a New York red bull striker who is on loan down to the Wilmington Hammerheads.
Corey was loaned to the Wilmington Hammerheads at the end of May. His loan was extended at the end
of June through the end of the USL pro season.

It's nearly a week since the transfer window closed in this country yet the papers are still
talking about the late bid to bring Porto midfielder Joao Moutinho into White Hart Lane. With AVB
reportedly fuming and Zenit st Petersburg set to pounce, could the Portuguese be forever seen as
the â€˜one that got away?

Jermain Defoe has gone through a couple of frustrating years at White Hart Lane due, largely to
Harry preferring other strikers ahead of him. Throughout that period there has been talk of moves
elsewhere but none of those have materialised to date.

In some ways, JD has been the architect of his misfortune â€“ thrilling when coming off the
bench and scoring as an impact sub â€“ but frustrating when he starts a game.

Match day as Arsenal return to action with QPR visiting the Grove today. It has been a testing week for the people associated with Arsenal Football Club, whether from the fans perspective or from the employees' perspective. But today is the day to put all that aside and concentrate on one solitary goal.

After watching his side succumb to a second straight goalless draw, Arsenal manager Arsene
Wenger rubbished claims that they'll struggle to cope with the departure of talisman Robin van
Persie.

The Gunners' leading goalscorer from last season completed a shocking move to Manchester United
earlier this month, and while Arsenal fired yet another blank the Dutchman was on the scoresheet at
Old Trafford.

For the neutrals it must have been a good game, for us it was another "typical" Chelsea display in
a game that on paper, Chelsea should have won easily.

Now I mean no disrespect to Reading and their fans at all when I say that, but let's put things
into perspective here. A newly promoted side come to Stamford Bridge on a Wednesday night, on
Chelsea's first appearance at the Bridge since winning the Champions League and with plenty of
attacking talent on the pitch, surely it's a home banker isn't it?

After the 6-2 defeat at home to Seattle Sounders ELAC and a knife wheedling Glyconerd try to
make sense of Robin Fraser's tactics, Luis Bueno joins to pull us back from the brink, and super
fan Ty calls in to give us his perspective on Robin Fraser.

Coming off a rather horrible week, the Seattle Sounders got just what they needed with a win
over Cascadia Cup rivals the Vancouver Whitecaps. The winning goal was provided by none other than
Fredy Montero, who made a bit of a surprise appearance off the bench. A surprise only because he
figured to be starting.

The Seattle Sounders are looking for a record fourth straight US Open Cup title as they travel
to face Sporting Kansas City in the final. The match will take place at Livestrong Sporting Park in
Kansas City, KS on Wednesday, August 8, 2012.

Not much new to talk about here from our perspective, but the MLS Players Union has released an
updated mid-season salary list for all MLS teams, including our own Portland Timbers. While the
Timbers haven't been terribly active this mid-season with regards to bringing in new players,
specifically new players from outside the league, the two new players, Danny Mwanga and Kosuke
Kimura, you probably didn't catch last time salaries released are now there.

It would appear that reports of Alvaro Fernandez's imminent departure may have been a bit
premature. While the rumor wire was all abuzz over Fernandez joining Colombian side Deportivo Cali
last week, El Pais is now reporting that the deal has fallen through.

It's not entirely clear why this happened, but it does seem to indicate that Fernandez will at
least be finishing out the MLS season with the Sounders.

With Scunthorpe anchored to the bottom of League One and on a six-game losing streak, you'd have
grounds to assume that manager Alan Knill had no reason to consider himself a lucky man not so, as
we're talking about a man who survived a vicious SQUIRREL ATTACK here.

With Scunthorpe anchored to the bottom of League One and on a six-game losing streak, you'd have
grounds to assume that manager Alan Knill had no reason to consider himself a lucky man not so, as
we're talking about a man who survived a vicious SQUIRREL ATTACK here.

Scunthorpe boss Alan Knill has revealed he almost lost his life in a bizarre squirrel related
accident. The Iron's poor start to the season has been given some perspective after their manager
revealed he feared he was going to die after his bicycle hit a squirrel. He said: "I got hit by a
squirrel. I [.

I've spilled a lot of virtual ink on Brek Shea. Like, a lot. So, as Shea possibly prepares to take
his first important call up this week against Jamaica, I want to pull out a few of these past
points that can still serve a purpose. I think, as always, perspective is key, but should more be
expected of Shea?

If Terrence Boyd, Sean Johnson, Joe Corona or Brek Shea needed a reminder of what they
potentially missed out on by not getting a chance to compete in the Olympics, they will get as
close a look as they will possibly want.

It's probably the most spoken about rivalry in modern football, Real Madrid vs Barcelona, simply
known as El ClÃ¡sico. Nike have launched a new video promoting their latest CTR360 boot
featuring the visionary Andres Iniesta.

Well, I picked a pretty interesting week to go out of town from an Arsenal perspective. When I
left last week there was hope that RvP might be staying put, everyone was jazzed up about the new
signings, and there was talk of more to come. I land in San Francisco on Wednesday last week, turn
on my phone, and immediately receive 5-10 texts from both Arsenal and ManUre fans about the now
confirmed transfer of one Robin Van Persie to Manchester.

After taking just two points from five straight games against the league's worst teams, the
Portland Timbers are about to face one of the MLS' best. Oi.

Any discussion of the New York Red Bulls, from Portland's perspective, must start with Kenny
Cooper. His 13 goals in 2012 have been a sore spot for Timbers fans, mainly because of how much
more that number is than his 2011 total.

Another day, another slew of new names, yet, still no new signings. Milan's utterly failed transfer
campaign to date has been duly noted by its fans in the most telling of ways. Only 15,000 have
signed on as season ticket holders. To give some perspective on how bad this is, Sampdoria â€“ now
playing in [.

Liverpool hope they can finally offload Alberto Aquilani back to Serie A after informing the
Italian he is not part of Brendan Rodgers' plans.
Aquilani did not return to Merseyside with the rest of the Liverpool squad when they flew home from
their North America tour on Saturday.
Instead, he headed to Rome to see if a deal could be struck with numerous Serie A sides, one of
which is believed to be Fiorentina.

The Rest

This letter has apparently made the rounds of Little League the past few years, but I only recently came across it as a soccer coach. The best I can tell, it was written by Brian Gotta, the President of CoachDeck. It's an open letter to his parents on his little league baseball team. But the sentiments are felt by youth sports coaches across all sports.

Twenty four hours often gives one time to find more context and perspective, and this is definitely the case after yesterday's tightly contested encounter with Chelsea. Firstly it is remarkable that we can compete against a team that would be bankrupt if they were forced to live in the real world, they have a team full of massive 20/30/40 million pound signings and taking this into account

Jozy Altidore may be finding the back of the net more frequently than ever and may be playing
some of the best soccer in his career, but that is not to say the recent success has come easy for
the young American striker.

Say what you will about how successful it will be, but the Timbers have certainly managed to
sign one of the hottest coaching candidates out there in Caleb Porter. From a selfish perspective,
we can rest easy knowing that Porter will at least finish out the year of coaching DeAndre
Yedlin.

The London Olympic Games have come to their end. The question that now needs to be answered locally
from a SPANISH SPORTS perspective is: how did Spain fair? We have already the official answer from
the maximum Directives of the Superior Sports Council ( CSD) & Spanish Olympic Committee President,
Miguel Cardinal & Alejandro Blanco respectively: "satisfactory".

Three of Liverpool's promising young players spent a day bringing cheer to children in the
community recently when they paid a visit to the Royal School for the Blind and Alder Hey
hospital.
Academy trio Henoc Mukendi, Yusuf Mersin and Villyan Bijev were a credit to the club as they
firstly visited the pupils at the school in Wavertree before moving on to Alder Hey to hand out
some presents to the children on the wards.

Jeffrey Werner reviews Gillette Stadium for Stadium Journey. This is an updated review, since
they did one last season as well. I have to say, I think the opinion is a little rosy, but it's
important to see a perspective like this and realize that, for as much as we complain about
Gillette, it's actually a nice place.

If you aren't following Hope Solo's twitter feed, do.
Today's tweets were in response to Brandi Chastain's remarks during the US game against Colombia.
At about 18 minutes, Chastain disparaged defender Rachel Bheuler's ball control. She said that
Bheuler gives the ball away too much, and "needs to work on an improve on" her trapping skills.

As you are all now well aware of Alvaro Fernandez has been acquired by the Chicago Fire for
allocation money. This can only be described as a huge boost for the Fire organization. Fernandez
has been a main stay in the very good Seattle offensive attack over the last few years. His
production has fallen off from last season to this season.